Calls for extraordinary measures after walls crumble

(ANSA) - Naples, March 3 - United Nations cultural
organisation UNESCO on Monday warned Italy that the world-famous
ancient Roman site of Pompeii risked falling apart after the
latest in a string of rain-related collapses.
"Pompeii is destined to collapse entirely" without
extraordinary measures, said the head of Italy's national UNESCO
commission.
"We need a plan of action to ensure security in the entire
area. Without strong drainage for rainwater, it is clear that
Pompeii is destined to collapse entirely," said Giovanni
Puglisi.

Heavy rain was blamed for a wall of a Roman-era shop
collapsing in Pompeii on Monday, a day after two other precious
parts of the ancient city - a wall at the Temple of Venus and
another wall on a tomb in the famed necropolis of Porta Nocera -
suffered serious damage from bad weather.

These followed a long and worrying catalogue of bits of
Pompeii falling off.

In November 2010 the House of the Gladiators came down,
prompting Italian President Giorgio Napolitano to say: "This is
a disgrace for the whole of Italy".
In February 2012 a piece of plaster came off the the Temple
of Jupiter, one of Pompeii's main attractions.

Then, in September 2012, at the Villa of the Mysteries, an
even more iconic building, a five-metre-long flying buttress
gave in and went crashing to the ground.

Last November, finally, a wall in one of the ancient city's
main thoroughfares, Via dell'Abbondanza, keeled over while
another piece of decorative plaster, at the House of the Little
Fountain, dropped from the ceiling.
The superintendency of archaeology in Pompeii, Herculaneum
and Stabiae said Monday that the two-metre-high wall which was
part of a Roman-era shop that crumbled on Monday did so under
the pressure of a "great bulk of earth" rendered heavy by recent
rainstorms.

In a statement, the Superintendency highlighted that areas
not excavated and located right next to ancient walls are at
high risk of crumbling due to hydrogeological instability.

Water has never been adequately drained from the
archaeological site, the authority said, stressing that urgent
renovation work is part of an ambitious project to restore and
redevelop the ancient Roman ruins known as the Great Project of
Pompeii.

The project provides, among other things, for an injection
of 105 million euros in European Union funds for the restoration
of Pompeii"s ailing monuments
The UNESCO world heritage site has been plagued by poor
maintenance and a lack of funds for years.

Newly appointed Culture Minister Dario Franceschini called
a meeting on Tuesday to discuss the situation.

"Tomorrow I have a meeting to confront the emergency which
unfortunately is longstanding", he said Monday, voicing
confidence that the new government of dynamic young premier
Matteo Renzi would "swing fully behind the project".

Nonetheless, a public sector union warned Pompeii would
continue to crumble unless regular maintenance work is carried
out.

Renato Petra, national cultural coordinator of the
UGL-Intesa Funzione Pubblica union representing public sector
workers, said "the lack of financial resources" were to blame
as well as mismanagement.

European Union funds amounting to some 105 million euros
originally allocated for Pompeii, he noted, were used
to renovate other sites after they were not employed at the
2,000-year-old archaeological treasure.
But Luigi Malnati, Director General of Antiquities and
acting director of the superintendency of Pompeii, said the
so-called 'Great Pompeii' project to repair and preserve the
site was going ahead on schedule.

"The majority of the archeological park is part of the
massive conservation program, the Great Pompeii Project, which
is currently moving forward and comprises safety measures and
restoration of all of the structures including those recently
damaged", Malnati said.
He praised the recent re-opening of the House of the
Cryptoporticus, citing "we've had the first concrete results and
others will follow in the upcoming weeks".

In December Italy named the former head of its prestigious
art-theft unit to head up the ambitious Great Pompeii project.

Giovanni Nistri, a general in the paramilitary Carabinieri
police who led Italy's cultural asset-protection division from
2007 to 2010, will guide the redevelopment project, then culture
minister Massimo Bray announced.

The 'Comando Carabinieri per la Tutela del Patrimonio
Culturale', better known as the Carabinieri Art Squad, is the
branch of the Italian police responsible for combatting art and
antiquities crimes.

Founded in 1969, it was the first specialist police force
in the world in this sector, predating the UNESCO Convention on
the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import,
Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property of 1970.

In recent years it has pulled off a string of coups
including getting top US museums like the Getty and the Met to
return world-famous art that turned out to have been looted.

Bray said Nistri's background gave him "the right
sensitivity for this job".

The general's appointment was hailed by political parties
across the spectrum while a leading sector trade union, Uilbact,
said: "He will do well in his new post because he guarantees the
transparency and legality that has to always be at the forefont
at Pompeii".

"With the plan made by former (regional development)
minister (Fabrizio) Barca, the EU already has funds for the
protection of the site. Now it is a matter of applying our best
efforts to the field to reach the results," Bray said.

Barca was the minister of so-called 'territorial cohesion'
under the technical government led by ex-premier Mario Monti
which preceded the last government led by Enrico Letta, who was
effectively ousted by Renzi last month.

Bray envisioned a Pompeii "with welcoming hotels" and an
"efficient little train like the one connecting Heathrow with
London" that would whisk visitors from Naples to the ancient
Roman city that was buried under pumice and ash when Mount
Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D.

"I would like to arrive in the Naples train station and
find an information service that can usher tourists to Pompeii,
perhaps also to a museum. This all has to be built, but if we
work together, we will succeed," Bray said.

The culture minister said Nistri's No.2 would be Fabrizio
Magani, a ministry official who heads cultural and landscape
assets for central Italy's Abruzzo region and leads the
restoration project for L'Aquila, a medieval city devastated by
a 2009 earthquake that killed 297 people, left 65,000 homeless
and caused severe structural damage.

Uilbact, among others, was far less welcoming to Magani.

"We express a strongly negative judgement on Fabrizio
Magani's appointment because he is an art historian, while an
archaeologist was needed, and there were plenty at the culture
ministry who could have played that role".

The project to restore and redevelop the Pompeii
archeological site was included in a decree approved by Italy's
cabinet in early August.

"Project Pompeii is a project coordinating initiatives for
the archaeological site. It will be overseen by a
director-general to ensure compliance with the commitments
regarding Pompeii, who will also have special superintendence
over (the other ancient Roman sites of) Herculaneum and
Stabiae," the culture minister said when the decree was
approved.

The director will be supported by a maximum staff of 20
technicians, as well as five experts in law, economics,
architecture, urban planning and infrastructure.

In November State, regional and local authorities signed a
Pompeii management protocol in line with UNESCO stipulations.

UNESCO in July gave Italy until December 31 to apply a
series of upgrade measures or face having Pompeii removed from
the prestigious list of World Heritage sites.

The measures include video surveillance of 50% of the area
and a buffer zone around the site.

Unions at Pompeii have repeatedly alerted authorities to
new damage surfacing in the past month.

Critics complain that not enough is being done to preserve
and protect the site, which has been plagued for decades by
accusations of mismanagement, neglect and even mafia
infiltration.